[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 154 (2008), Part 12]
[House]
[Page 16451]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




               OIL EXPLORATION AND PRODUCTION IN AMERICA

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from California (Mr. Daniel E. Lungren) is recognized for 5 
minutes.
  Mr. DANIEL E. LUNGREN of California. Mr. Speaker, I have the 
privilege of representing the Third Congressional District of 
California. It is in the Greater Sacramento area. I live in a wonderful 
community called Gold River along the American River, near the site of 
the finding of gold in the 1800s, which began the great gold rush in 
California.
  When I was home in my district over the last several weekends, I had 
an opportunity to speak to a number of people in that district, and the 
issue that they were most concerned about was that of energy.
  This is of some interest to me, not only because of the legitimate 
concerns of the people of my district--the problems that are besetting 
them as a result of the higher and higher prices of energy, 
particularly with respect to gasoline, the embedded transportation 
costs and many other things, such as food--but because, before I moved 
to that area some now 20 years ago, I for most of my life lived in Long 
Beach, California, and I'd had the privilege of representing that area 
and the adjoining areas for 10 years in this Congress during my first 
tenure here. Although I was not involved in the energy industry nor 
were my parents nor were other members of my family, I did go to school 
with a number of people who were either involved or whose parents were 
involved in that industry.
  The community of Signal Hill is completely surrounded by my hometown 
of Long Beach--Signal Hill, one of the longest producing oil fields in 
the United States. As I grew up, I saw offshore drilling, some very 
close to shore on the manmade islands in San Pedro Bay and Long Beach 
Harbor, where the drilling of a resource that had been counted to be, 
perhaps, as large as 2 billion barrels of oil was a reality during the 
years I grew up, and it continues to this day.
  As a matter of fact, every school district in California benefited 
from that as they got a bit of the royalties that were achieved because 
these are considered State lands, tidelands.
  I also saw some rigs further out off the shores of the Long Beach and 
Huntington Beach areas that I represented, and I noted that we didn't 
have problems with oil seepage or with the loss of oil to any 
measurable amount during those years that I saw it there.
  I also understood from those who worked in the fields and from those 
who worked in the refineries that this is tough work, difficult work, 
but it is proud work, hard work, blue-collar work, American work. I 
remember some of my friends having parents who were called wildcatters. 
It wasn't a derisive term at the time. It was a term of some pride. 
These were people who took risks to go out and attempt to find oil, not 
only in California but in other places around the United States, and 
somehow during the period of time or from the period of time that I was 
a child to the present time, these people have gotten a bad name, that 
somehow anything that is touched by the oil industry is dirty and 
befouls the environment.
  Yet what we have seen over the last 30 to 40 years is a remarkable 
improvement in technology and tremendous attention to detail with 
respect to the protection of the environment. So it not only surprises 
but it saddens me that on this floor we can't have debate about bills 
that would allow us to discover, uncover and produce the natural 
resources that are available to us at this present time for ourselves, 
for our children and for our grandchildren.
  We are here on a Thursday evening once again. We are not here for a 
5-day week but for barely a 3-day week, coming up next week for our 
last week before we leave for the August recess, and we have not had 
one serious piece of legislation dealing with increased supply. We've 
had shell game legislation like today's legislation on the Strategic 
Petroleum Reserve. We'll remove some now, put it back later. The net 
result is no increase in supply worldwide, and that is the answer, in 
part, to the energy problem.
  I have supported wind, and I have supported solar, and I have 
supported nuclear, and I have supported geothermal, and I have 
supported hydroelectric. I continue to support that, but the fact of 
the matter is, if you look at the real world, we very much rely on oil, 
natural gas and oil, and we have tremendous reserves in and around this 
country that we have put off limits. It doesn't make sense. It makes 
less and less sense every day, and yet we fail to move.
  I would just hope that, before we leave next Friday, we would at 
least have a single vote on this floor to open up greater areas for 
exploration and for the production of American oil produced by American 
men and women for American men and women.

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